


Incremental Insight

by hophophop



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, References to Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-04
Updated: 2016-03-04
Packaged: 2018-05-24 14:51:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6157180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/hophophop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“Did you really believe you’re the first addict in the family?” </em>
</p><p>She paused again, looking down at her hands. “I haven’t been in your position, Sherlock. I haven’t been in your mother’s position.” She looked sideways at him then, waiting for him to complete the sequence.</p><p>episode tag for 4x14, "Who Is That Masked Man" and chock full of spoilers for that episode.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incremental Insight

The moment his father held it up, Holmes knew the file’s contents, as if it were confirmation he’d requested himself for a deduction about which he had no doubt.

He hadn’t considered it one way or the other, for most of his life. At first, and for far too long, he never for a moment thought himself an addict at all. He was an expert in self-management, a scientist seeking means by which to extend and hone his already extensive mental faculties. Alistair tried to warn him, but he brushed those worries aside as nonsense. Only twice before the end was this self-image challenged, first when Drummond excoriated his character. She speculated on familial antecedents as she was wont to do, but he immediately submerged her entire assessment in scorn and relegated it to the darkest corner of his attic.

The second time was even less appealing to contemplate. It was his fifth assignation with Irene, and the first she’d instigated. They were resting between bouts, and in a moment of pillow talk he now assumed to have been a sly dig at his patent stupidity, she linked her independent spirit to having been raised in a (no doubt entirely fabricated) home broken by alcoholism, and speculated his might come from similar circumstances.

“Considering the prevalence of both divorce and mindless conformity in every echelon of society, I think your theory needs work,” he said, conscious that she wasn’t seeking sympathy for the implication of a difficult childhood.

“I don’t mean as a general rule, but for certain individuals, with particular personality traits. For you and me, each with a rather willful disposition,” and she dragged out those last syllables with suggestive tones pointing to more recent activities. “What better lesson in self-sufficiency than an early demonstration of the fallibility of our own parents? From a young age, to be prepared to fend for ourselves. In a way I’m grateful to my father’s trouble with the bottle, to have started out life this way, confident in my self-reliance. Aren’t you?”

“My father may be addicted to wielding power on a whim, and certainly he can never get enough of his own ego, but he chooses only to abuse others, not himself.”

“Your mother, then.”

“No. She died when I was a child.”

“So?”

He frowned into the bedclothes next to her outstretched arm, irked by the topic of discussion but intoxicated by her presence. She’d finally called _him_. He wanted to ensure she would do so again. “So I gained my independence from my mother by her absence. I wanted nothing to do with my father because he was horrid in every way, and my mother was gone so there was nothing to want.”

After a moment he felt her raise her head, expecting more, but he kept his face still, eyes shut. “Hmm,” she concluded, and he could hear the half-smile of her disbelief. But if he’d learned anything from his years as Morland Holmes’ son, it was when not to rise to the bait. (What he still didn’t know was how to recognize bait when Moriarty was on the other end of the line.)

It wasn’t until some months at Hemdale, sober and slowly stepping clear of the shock and grief that had obscured his faculties as surely as the drugs had, that the notion slipped into his consciousness again. That perhaps there was more to his parents’ marriage than he’d known, no matter how precocious he was at six and seven and eight. Flickers of memory in which his mother had surprised him with excitement or anger over a trifle. A week in which she’d worn the same dress every day. A weekend when she didn’t emerge from her room. As often as he tried to recuse himself via trance, he couldn’t help but observe private counselling and group work alike frequently revisited the topic of family patterns, family history, family dynamics. Two-thirds of the residents at any given time spoke of relatives in thrall to one substance or another. Of course it was entirely possible, and to be honest, why wouldn’t a woman chained to his father chose to dull her senses if given the opportunity? No matter how attentive and entertaining, how devoted her child might be, he could be no defence against the onslaught of Morland Holmes’ undivided disapproval. He knew that better than anyone.

Of course he was not the first addict in the family.

It was a comfort, small and hard but comfort nonetheless, to maintain calm in the face of his father’s revelation. It was obviously intended to be a blow, and he was proud to take it without a flinch, gratified to give his father not the tiniest crumb of satisfaction of a response. Reading the clinical outlines of his mother’s struggle pained him, how could it not, but it was also an unexpected opportunity to see her again, however faintly. There could never be enough of that.

Reflex (built from Alfredo’s solid coaching) took him to a meeting after leaving his father’s office, the slim leather case resting between his thighs and his palms as voices murmured and rumbled around him. In a moment of lull he found he’d lurched up, clutching the case in front of him with both fists, and announced bluntly to a room full of strangers what his father had said. All at once he felt the shock of it like being backhanded, and he collapsed into his seat. He roused himself as the pair of volunteers folding up the chairs reached his row, and he walked home slowly, accompanied by the periodic flutter in his breast pocket of Watson’s messages filling up his phone. He pictured them like the decorative rocks on display in The Leviathan case, any one an uncut diamond in disguise.

A traffic light flipped from yellow to red in front of him, and he stumbled to a halt, staring. He should revisit the report of the fire, determine whether drug use played any part. A passing pedestrian eventually jostled him, and he continued walking again. Watson would do that if he asked. And probably if he didn’t.

It was coming on evening by the time he wearily climbed the Brownstone’s steps, the sky violet and grey and deep blue behind the silhouette of buildings and bare branches. Watson was inside, waiting for him. They’d talk about work; she’d chide him about the progress he’d missed. And later, he would tell her about his mother. He hugged the case one-handed across his chest and unlocked the door.

* * *

Sherlock took the tray with the soup bowls into the kitchen, and Joan leaned back on his couch, eyes resting on the closed blue folder lying atop the battered leather sleeve on the low table in the middle of his room. Sherlock said it merely confirmed something he’d already suspected, and she let that go when it was clear in his voice that his understanding was somewhat more fragile than that. They conferred briefly over the details in the file and the fleeting glimpses of a woman between the typewritten lines. There wasn’t enough information on the soft pages to explain what happened 18 years later, but perhaps something else would, in time. Or perhaps not. Some things would never make any sense, no matter how hard you tried.

On his way back with the tray now stocked with teapot and mugs, Sherlock stopped abruptly and gave her a pointed stare.

“What?”

He frowned and set the tray down, then continued around the table to resume his seat to her right. “You’re not saying something,” he declared as he sat down, eyes on the table.

She shook her head, then sighed. “I don’t know…” She cleared her throat. “It’s just, my perspective on this, I’m not sure this is the best time.”

He grimaced. “I would not have laid this file in front of you if I did not want to hear your thoughts. I only ask that you consider the history here, and treatment practices common before either of us was born.”

“No, I get that. I’m not— I’m not not-saying something about your mother’s history. It’s just…” She paused again, looking down at her hands. “I haven’t been in your position, Sherlock. I haven’t been in your mother’s position.” She looked sideways at him then, waiting for him to complete the sequence.

The silence hung heavy between them, but she was suddenly aware of her heart pounding. Yet another conversation they’d managed to avoid for years. Hell, she’d avoided talking about it for more than a decade, except for two tense sessions in her addiction-counselling training and the few sentences she’d crumbled on the kitchen table as Sherlock drank her mother’s medicinal tea.

He pursed his lips and nodded his head slowly. “You’re referring to your ex-client. Who wasn’t a client at all. The no-show at the clinic.”

“Liam, yes.”

“But you didn’t shut him out. You were there; he was not.”

“That time.” She pushed her fingers hard into her forehead. “That…that wasn’t typical.” A bitter laugh pushed raw up her throat. “Well, it was, actually, up until the end. And then I finally gave him an ultimatum and when he didn’t meet it, I left. I’m not saying I think your father was right in all that he did or that I trust him as far as I could throw him. I’m sure the situation was very different,” and she gestured with her chin toward the folder. “But in this one thing, maybe, I might understand him a little.”

She could have laughed at the sour disgusted look on Sherlock’s face if it wasn’t how she felt inside, like taking a mouthful of something gone rancid. She poured out the tea and passed him his mug before sipping from her own, letting the light bitterness burn away the bad taste. At least for a moment.

“Up until that point it was like playing a game of chicken I always lost. I’d look back every time I said no more, and he’d flash his sad sorry grin and cry his apologies. And I wanted to believe them.” A muscle in her cheek started to twitch, and she didn’t want to know how much more disgusted Sherlock must be by her now. She could only see his legs in her peripheral vision, and his hands resting on his thighs. Her cheek twitched again, and she noticed how still he was. She continued, “I think he wanted to believe his promises too, but it was magical thinking, for both of us. He wasn’t ready, and I couldn’t make him, and we were both miserable going round and round it. And finally _I_ hit bottom: no more hope. I couldn’t believe in him any more.” She cradled her mug in both hands and took a couple of sips. “It wasn’t even a big thing in the end. His little sister was going on a school trip to Paris, they’d been doing fund-raising for it the whole year, and she was really excited. I’d gotten her 150 francs as a going away present, which was like thirty bucks at the time. And the night they left, we were going to see them off at the airport, and after the banks were closed and I couldn’t fix it, I went to get the money from my desk…” Her throat closed up, and she hated that she still cared. That it still hurt.

“And he’d taken it,” Sherlock filled in smoothly, his voice level and matter-of-fact. Like he was stating the obvious. Which she supposed he was.

“If I stayed, if I kept hoping for the best, I’d only be enabling him and grinding myself into despair. So I took my name off the lease, got a new phone number, and moved to my Aunt Viv’s place. I felt so bad I gave the landlord three-months’ rent before I left, hoping Liam’d get his act together to find a roommate or a better job to afford it on his own. Never occurred to me to give the money to him directly. I still can’t decide if that was smart or just horribly sad.” Sherlock leaned forward to pick up his mug from the floor, and she surreptitiously wiped her eyes.

“And was that the last contact you had until he called you from Rikers?”

“No, there’ve been a few near misses over the years. But he never really tried to get clean, so…” She shrugged. Most of the time she could believe she put it all behind her, but at the moment the memory of letting herself be deceived so many times made her feel sick all over again. “You once told me that I couldn’t relate to a profound sense of shame. But before I learned anything about addiction, and honestly for a long time after, I was so ashamed. That I still loved him, first of all. That I couldn’t stop him using, couldn’t convince him to stop. That he didn’t love me enough. That I wasn’t reason enough. That it was my fault. My failure. If I’d done something else, been someone else, it never would have happened. And when I wasn’t ashamed, I was furious. At him, at me, his dealers, everything. It was a bad time.”

She stretched out her arm to rest her fingers briefly on the blue folder. “It would have been so much harder then, for both of them. Even more pressure to save face and keep secrets; even less understanding about the biology and psychology of addiction. And then to add the responsibility for children into the mix?” She shifted back and twisted a bit to face him, though he continued to stare ahead. “I’m not making excuses for how he behaved. Like I said, I don’t trust him; I don’t even particularly _like_ him. I just don’t think evil was required to make the choices he did, then. Not even negligence. Just standard variety human weakness.”

Sherlock slumped a bit, and glanced her way once, twice. His tiny double-take told her she’d done a poor job of hiding her tears, a deduction confirmed when he somehow pulled a neatly folded handkerchief from the jumbled pile of laundry he’d been reclining against and passed it over to her.

“Seriously?” she muttered, fingering the embroidered edge before dabbing it around her eyes and feeling more than a little self-conscious. She’d said enough.

Continuing in valet-mode, he held up the teapot and pointed the spout toward her mug. When she shook her head, he emptied the pot into his cup and slid down to sit on the floor, his back against the front of the couch. When he finished his tea, he set his mug on the floor and reached over for the folder, letting it rest upright against his chest.

“If you had to do it again?” he asked.

“You mean, with Liam? Three strikes.”

He looked up over his shoulder at her. “That was rather hasty.”

“That was three years of therapy and 18-months of sober companion training and countless sleepless nights. You are not the first person in this room who’s wondered about that.” She stood up all at once and then paused, dizzy for a moment. If she didn’t head upstairs now, she was going to fall asleep down here. “You’re not even the first one to ask me that tonight.”

She loaded up the tray to return it to the kitchen. He was still on the floor, eyes still focused somewhere in front of him.

“Strike one,” he murmured, his hand holding the folder to his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by the heart-wrenching what-if in the [AV Club review](http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/elementary-determined-make-sherlock-cry-232885) of "Who Is That Masked Man":
>
>> Imagine the conversation we could have seen between Sherlock and Joan as he tries to hash out how Morland could possibly have given up on his mother, while Joan argues the needs and boundaries of someone who herself has had to walk away from a partner who’s an addict.


End file.
